Amber Herman:
Building a School in Kenya

By Heidi Koester
This profile was printed in Abroad View magazine spring 2006

Maasai children in a village of the Maasai tribal land of the Maasai Mara in southwestern Kenya used to huddle in a cold classroom without windows, in a crumbling dirt-floored structure. But with the help of young volunteers like 19-year-old Amber Herman, Free the Children and Leaders Today were able to build them a new school. Free the Children chapters throughout North America raised money for the school construction, and volunteers spent six weeks of their 2003 summer in Kenya.

A tribal member shows Amber Herman the Maasai village. 
The buildings in the background are made of mud, cow dung, and sticks. 

"The entire community helped,” Herman says of the building process. Engineers from the University of Nairobi worked with Free the Children volunteers to create a school with glass windows, a concrete floor, and a tin roof.

But Herman didn’t just help mix mortar; she also taught in the village. Her students, accustomed to learning through repetition, weren’t sure what to do when asked to write a story in English. Herman gave the class 15 minutes to write and then collected 10 identical essays. Frustrated with this “anti-creativity,” she focused on making the classroom more playful. Herman brought Play-Doh® and art supplies and watched 8th graders create impromptu sculptures of elephants and families, draw pictures of landscapes and sunsets, and turn pipe cleaners into gardens of flowers. “It was wonderful to watch the girls, who are used to being subordinate to men, not ask permission to be creative,” she says. Herman tried the story assignment again, and this time the students crafted 10 different stories. “They wrote pages and pages,” she says. “I ran out of paper.” The children’s stories ranged from tales of their daily trek to school to their efforts to protect pet goats from lions.

Herman’s experience solidified her plan to study International Agriculture at Iowa State University. She has developed her own major that combines this with public service administration. “Africa steals your heart away,” she says. Now, when Herman hears statistics about poverty and starvation in Africa, the numbers represent her students.

After her time in Kenya, Herman realized the importance of an international worldview. “Your ideas about who you are and who you want to be are expanded, and it directs the rest of your life.”

Her life took a dramatic turn when she took a semester off college to join Leaders Today’s “Take Action” motivational tour. After speaking to groups of students about Free the Children, volunteerism, and leadership, Herman returned to campus even more dedicated to a career in the management of an agriculture-related non-profit organization.

The students Herman taught are growing older too. If they’re pursuing higher education, Herman’s latest project may touch their lives. She worked with friends at Iowa State University and the national organization Books for Africa to collect more than 22,000 textbooks for African universities. Responding to the needs of her African peers helped Herman stay connected to her initial experience.

And her story doesn’t end here. Herman plans to spend a semester abroad in Uganda in 2006, through the School for International Training (SIT). “Anyone has the capability to study and experience and explore life abroad,” she says. “Don’t wait until your junior year of college—do it as a sophomore or even younger.”